Freewheelin' In Cyberspace--Finally. By Jeff Smith BY GEORGE, I think I've got it! Like Eliza Doolittle finally mastering the mother tongue as spoken by the mothers and fathers of the Knightsbridge, rather than those of Stebney (exceedingly rare and difficult Pygmalion/My Fair Lady/Rolling Stones mixed metaphor--degree of difficulty: 4.8), I have finally seized the dreaded e-mail monster by the larynx and wrestled it to the ground. At least that's what I'm thinking as I type these characters: By the time I face the task of sending them speeding along the wires to The Weekly, I may feel somewhat less full of myself, but hey! I pulled this off once yesterday, so what's to stop me from repeating the feat today? Ubiquitous and irreducible Murphy, for one. But I am undaunted. I think I've finally figured out what I want and need in a computer, and have purchased it. These words are being written on a laptop, which is an iteration of the computer genre that appeals to the gypsy in me. I do a fair percentage of my writing on the road, on motorcycle jaunts and pickup truck tours, and even at home, I like to sit outside in the crisp autumnal zephyrs and compose my prose. So now I am Pentiumed and Internetted and e-mailed and WWWed, dot-commed, whatevered. All I've got to do is learn a few keystrokes or mouse motions to make it all work, and life as I know it will be ducky. No more calling The Weekly long distance to ask Hilda to turn on the modem, then having my modem call their modem long distance, failing to make connection, calling Hilda again, ibid, op cit, ad nausem, until everybody is sick of dealing with the hassle, and Jabba the Huff is pissed at me again. He's one mean son of a bitch when he's pissed. Drop me a line when you find the time. My new e-mail address is jssmith@dakotacom.net. AND WHILE I'VE got your attention: Be it known that my driving record is clean. No points. Safe driver, non-smoker discounts on my insurance rates. A few more years and I'll be eligible for the senior citizen deal. So all of you dim-viewers out there who berated me in the letters-to-the-editor column for using my column to redress a grievance over a traffic ticket: Kiss my rosy red. I haven't got a ticket--that stuck--since before I got to be a gimp. Sure, there was the one for speeding north of Sonoita in '82, but the county lost that one. And there was another speeding beef on the way into Kingman one late night, but they handled that as a gas-guzzler deal. And 105 in a 55 in New Mexico last year, but the cop only wrote me up for 14 or so over, so it was just a question of paying some judge a huge fine, but no points or nasties on my license... ...and a similar deal in Wyoming a few years back, but the statute of limitations has run on that one. And half a dozen times getting pulled over on my motorcycle/sidecar rig, but every time a cop asks me who belongs to the wheelchair and I say it's mine, they get all damp around the corneas and tell me what a spunky guy I am and put away their ticket books and tell me to keep it down and have a nice day. So for official purposes I am as innocent, traffic-wise, as a newborn babe without a learner's permit. My diatribe about traffic cops and misapplied human resources found its inspiration in pure common sense and altruism. So there. LAST NIGHT AS I was getting ready for the weekly poker game at the Lazy RR ranch, I had the telly on to ESPN where the Seminoles were playing the Wolfpack in an ACC football game. Suddenly the years of indifference toward college pigskin were forgotten and I could feel the nip of an autumn night in the air, and thrill once more to the excitement of the opening kickoff. When I was a kid in Tucson, my brother's high school and the University of Arizona had some of the best teams in the history of sport. The Tucson High School Badgers, with Mike Morales, Jerry Coppola and the Flood brothers, righteously kicked ass, and my dad and I went to every home game, despite the fact that my brother Dave didn't give a rat's ass for football, and seldom bothered to attend. He was friends, however, on an intellectual level, with Mike Morales and Pat Flood, so I got to meet them. What really fired me up, though, was UA football during the mid-'50s when Art Luppino played tailback for the Wildcats, and set a shitload of national rushing, scoring and total offense records that stood longer than virtually any others in the history of the NCAA. One or two may still be around. Maybe punt or kickoff return yardage. Last year I read a long article in the Star about Luppino, who is now in his 60s and still looks like he could outrun the devil. And Star columnist Greg Hansen, who is a perceptive lad and a fine writer, did a column about Luppino which finally did sufficient credit to the man's almost superhuman skills. Anyhow, the burden of all this is that I plan, soon, to give you a little peek at a childhood hero of mine, and the heart-warming lengths to which an 8-year-old boy went to document his idol's sports career and personal life. I remember stuff about Art Luppino he probably can't recall about himself. This one should have even Tom Danehy reaching for his hanky.

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